1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of e-commerce particularly as it pertains to electronic platforms to facilitate targeted marketing based on deep user profiles, and consumer end-user feedback and interaction with both retailers and other consumers.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
Electronic commerce has become embedded in cultures throughout the developed world. At the same time consumers worldwide have incorporated Internet communication as an integral part of their lifestyle. Social networks such as Facebook™ and MySpace™ and business orientated networking platforms such as LinkedIn™ continue to grow in popularity. Blogging platforms such as Twitter™ or Google™ Buzz provide additional ways for users to keep in touch with friends and family and to make new social contacts worldwide. E-commerce platforms such as eBay™ and Amazon.com™ allow retailers easy access to consumers and even allow retail consumers to become sellers. The popularity of electronic social networks and electronic commerce has led to profound changes within our culture, particularly concerning production and consumption of advertisements.
The online advertising market continues to grow and become a larger portion of total advertising revenue. Currently, the total US advertising market is around $100 billion with the online portion now accounting for approximately $24 billion of that total. Most of the online advertising market is based on page and/or search content. There is limited ability to target a consumer beyond knowing search and site preferences. Click through rates on Internet advertisements increase dramatically when the advertisements can be more specifically targeted to the consumer type most likely to be interested in a specific product group. Individual consumers better tolerate banner, pop up and video advertisements on their favorite Internet sites if the ads are more relevant to the individual consumer and less randomly placed.
Both retailers and end user consumers benefit from the ability to see product reviews by individuals that have recently purchased or used a specific product or service. In the present art any feedback or review available could be difficult to find and to trust as this information may be spread out over a number of individual sites and there is little if any control over who can input material for reviews. For example a retailer may be unaware that a consumer has found dissatisfaction with their product and has blogged about it on a third party site which the retailer is not monitoring. A consumer would have no reason to trust a review in a particular site that could have been embellished by the very retailer that sells the product or service. An individual unhappy customer could skew the ratings for a particular product by repeatedly giving extremely negative feedback on a particular site. An individual may give a glowing review for a product they just purchased but several months down the road may have had numerous problems with the product and if queried now would give a much different review and yet the glowing review may be left on particular site for many months or years without any follow up. Although there are mechanisms for feedback between retailers and consumers and between consumers themselves in the present art, there is little control over the process and feedback is widely scattered over multiple sites and often not trustworthy making the information less valuable.
While the current art of social networks and e-commerce have the ability to collect limited data about individual consumers, the information is incomplete and often out of date and may be scattered over multiple platforms. Normally the data profiling an individual consumer would not include feedback from that consumer on products he or she is using. There would be little chance that an e-retailer could specifically target potential customers who are in fact looking for a specific product or service. Any data collected needs to be updated over time as the individual consumer's circumstances change. In the current art the consumer has little if any incentive to give more detailed information or feedback that might be useful for the retailer. Other individuals in a consumer's social network might be very much influenced by purchasing decisions and product reviews from peers. In the current art the retailer is for the most part completely blind to positive or negative influences their customers have within their own social networks.
Another challenge in the art today is the balance of privacy and value. Consumers seek to maintain their privacy to some extent, but are desirous of realizing the value of many of the new online services, most of which require them to divulge personal information (or to allow the service provider to observe a significant portion of their online activities, which amounts to the same thing).
In summary, while both consumers and retailers are adapting to the paradigm of the Internet world there needs to be a better way to facilitate interactions between retailers and consumers and between consumers themselves that provides benefits for the retailer, the consumer and the advertising industry, while maintaining a reasonable balance (and a consumer-controlled balance) between privacy and value. In the current art there considerable limitations on the ability for retailers to deliver deeply targeted advertisements to the consumer, to get reliable feedback from the consumer and for consumers to efficiently get trusted advice from other consumers who are using or have purchased particular products.